The proposal responded to Egan's central critique of conventional schooling: that it covers enormous content without developing deep understanding of anything. Learning in Depth inverts this pattern by guaranteeing that every student develops deep expertise in at least one domain across their entire educational career, while the conventional curriculum proceeds in parallel.
Pilot implementations have been conducted in schools in Canada, the United States, Australia, and several European countries. Teachers report that students who receive topics initially react with puzzlement or disappointment — 'Why did I get dust?' — but within months develop investment, curiosity, and eventually genuine expertise. By adolescence, students are often the most knowledgeable people in their communities about their assigned topics.
The AI moment gives the program new urgency. When machines can provide any fact about any topic instantly, the distinctive value of long-term human engagement with a single domain becomes clearer: the student develops not just knowledge but understanding, not just information but cognitive tools, not just a subject but a relationship with a subject that survives and transcends any particular information transaction. The student who has spent twelve years with apples has developed something the machine cannot provide: the embodied, accumulated, progressively deepening relationship that is the substance of genuine expertise.
Learning in Depth: A Simple Innovation That Can Transform Schooling was published by University of Chicago Press in 2010, though Egan had been advocating the approach for years before.
The Learning in Depth project continues through Simon Fraser University, which maintains implementation resources and a network of participating schools.
One topic for twelve years. Each student is assigned a topic on their first day of school and studies it throughout their educational career.
Depth develops all five kinds. Sustained engagement with a single domain develops mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic understanding in sequence.
Parallel to conventional curriculum. Learning in Depth operates alongside the standard curriculum, not as replacement.
Expertise as developmental achievement. The student becomes an expert — often the most knowledgeable person in her community on her topic.
The relationship survives information abundance. What AI cannot provide is the accumulated, embodied, progressively deepening relationship that constitutes genuine expertise.